The present technology relates generally to auditory prostheses, sound, and more particularly, to determining stimulation signal strength in an auditory prosthesis.
Auditory prostheses include, for example, hearing aids, middle ear implants, cochlear implants, brain stem implants, auditory mid-brain implant and other totally or mostly implanted devices which provide acoustic, mechanical and/or electrical stimulation to a recipient to assist with hearing. For example, a conventional cochlear implant includes an external unit containing a microphone, sound processor and a transmitter; and an internal or implanted unit containing a receiver/stimulator component and an electrode assembly component. Sound is received at the microphone, which generates electrical audio signals representative of the received sound. The electrode audio signals are processed by the sound processor to generate control signals according to an implemented sound processing strategy for controlling the generation of stimulation signals which are to be delivered to the cochlea via the electrode assembly. The control signals are transmitted by the transmitter to the implanted receiver/stimulator component, which sends corresponding stimulation signals to appropriate electrode contacts of the electrode assembly to stimulate the recipient's auditory nerve to cause a perception of hearing.
Attempts are being made to improve recipient perception of certain target signals, e.g. speech, music and the like. Traditionally, to improve the performance of the auditory prosthesis operating in noise environments, noise reduction algorithms have been used to remove noise from a received signal, such that only a target signal or signal having low noise remains. Other traditional approaches select frequency channels based on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In these and other traditional approaches the amplitude of the acoustic signal is used to determine the corresponding stimulation signal strength.